Electronic devices play an ever increasing role within the workforce environment. Companies, both large and small, as well as health care providers, such as doctors' offices and hospitals, need to be able to manage personnel and electronic resources in an efficient and timely manner. As staff size is often reduced, many employees find themselves handling a variety of different tasks utilizing several different devices throughout the day. In the retail environment for example, electronic devices such as bar code scanners, printers, copy machines, cash registers and the like all play a role in day-to-day operations, but these devices also incur cost in terms of maintenance, battery power usage, and employee task time. At any given time an employee may be looking to use one or more of these devices only to find that some resource associated with the device is lacking. For example, a battery operated device may need charging or a copier device may be low on toner or may have run out of paper. All of these types of scenarios cost time and money within the workforce environment.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to efficiently manage devices within a workforce environment. Improving the management of such devices in concert with the efficient management of task assignments to employees will allow for organizations to optimize their workforce.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.